High school volleyball: Aberdeen Central serves up win against Mitchell

October 24, 2010|BY DEB SMITH, dsmith@aberdeennews.com

The Aberdeen Central and Mitchell match revolved around serve receive. The team that handled serve receive the best, won the game. Central struggled with serve receive and lost game two. Mitchell's problems with serve receive led to losses in the other three games. The Golden Eagles held off the Kernels by scores of 25-13, 22-25, 25-16, 25-16 on Saturday at Golden Eagles Arena in a high school volleyball matchup of Eastern South Dakota Conference and District 3AA teams. In the second game, our serve receive was bad and that set up everything for them, said Central coach Dennis Northrup. We'd give them a free ball and they'd hit it at us. We got less aggressive in game two. Our serving was less aggressive. When you're not aggressive and you're missing serves and you can't pass, that happens. So much of the game leads from serve receive. Mitchell got off to a slow start in the first game and trailed 14-2 before losing 25-13. The second game featured seven ties in the early going. The Kernels took a 21-15 lead on a block by Ashley Weber. The Eagles rattled off five straight points to trim the lead to one point. Central committed two serving errors and Mitchell came up with kills by Taylin Alm and Lexie Weier for the win. The Kernels lost the third game and continued to have serve receive problems in game four. It was their serving and our serve receive mixed together, said Mitchell coach Deb Thill. It seemed like once we had one serve receive error, we always had another one. It was kind of catchy. I like our offense. I like my setter (Charlee Nelson). She is very good and does a nice job of running our offense. When we're in system, we are hard to beat. We have to be in system a little bit more to beat a good team like Aberdeen. In game four, Central built a 16-12 lead and padded it with four kills and two ace serves for a 22-12 score. The Kernels scored three times to get to point 15. Central's Britini Haar connected on a kill and Mitchell put up a block for a 23-16 score. Carmeille Foster and Kayla Schaunaman finished off the match with a kill each. Foster and Kayla Schaunaman finished with 12 kills each in the match. Mitchell is a big team and the last time we played them, they were hard, said Foster. It's a home match and we needed to go out and play defense. Defense and serving win games. Mitchell has now lost five matches in a row but against tough competition and three of them on the road. Our last matches were Stevens (ranked No. 2), Huron (No. 3) and Aberdeen (No. 4). That's our schedule. That's OK. You have to play the best to be the best. The Kernels finish on the road on Thursday at Sioux Falls Roosevelt (No. 1). Paula Ruelas paced Central's defense with 21 digs and Foster recorded three solo and four assisted blocks. Haar and Ruelas had three ace serves each. Central returns to action Monday at Brookings in an ESD match. In district standings, Aberdeen is second behind Huron with Mitchell in third and Pierre in fourth. Serving: Central 85-95 9 aces (Britini Haar 18-22 3 aces, Paula Ruelas 17-19 3 aces, Kayla Schaunaman 12-12 2 aces). Hitting: Central 123-135 43 kills (Carmeille Foster 25-27 12 kills, Kayla Schaunaman 31-33 12 kills, Lauren McCafferty 16-18 7 kills, Haar 23-26 6 kills). Setting: Central 100-100 27 assists (Miranda Rook 80-80 21 assists). Digs: Central 76 (Ruelas 21, Rook 14, Kayla Schaunaman 13, McCafferty 11). Blocks: Central 5 solo 15 assists (Foster 3 solo 4 assists, McCafferty 1 solo 4 assists, Kelcy Schaunaman 1 solo 3 assists). Records: Mitchell 12-7, 9-5 ESD; Aberdeen Central 15-3, 9-3 ESD.